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UCU needs ‘honest conversation’ about low turnout in strike ballot

Failure to reach 50 per cent turnout threshold on pay ballot and exit of leader Sally Hunt must open the door for debate on future, union leaders agree

February 27, 2019
Sally Hunt
Source: Alamy

The University and College Union’s failure to achieve the 50 per cent turnout threshold required for strike action must lead to conversation, rather than recrimination, about why so few members are voting in pay ballots,?key figures in the union?have insisted.

The calls for a national debate on union turnout follow the news, announced on 22 February, that only 41 per cent of UCU members voted on potential strike action over the 2 per cent pay for 2018-19, which rises to 2.7 per cent for lower-paid staff. That result came exactly four months after a near-identical turnout in a ballot announced in October. About 70 per cent of voters backed strike action in both ballots.

Meanwhile, the union’s general secretary, Sally Hunt, has?resigned for health reasons, it was announced on 25 February.

Neither?the second failure to reach the ballot?threshold –?introduced by the Conservative government – nor the decision to rerun the pay ballot, which was taken by a special UCU conference on pay in November, should lead to a bout of finger-pointing within the union, said Adam Ozanne, UCU branch secretary at the University of Manchester.

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“The ballot results…indicate that those who thought we could beat the Tory anti-trade union legislation simply by working harder to get the vote out were overly optimistic,” said Dr Ozanne.

“This must not, however, become a blame game,” he continued, adding that “it must be about having an honest conversation” in which “we all reflect on the result and learn to listen to members”.

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Dr Ozanne, who is one of three candidates running for national vice-president (higher education), added that last year’s pensions dispute, “in which 62 out of 67 branches succeeded in getting over the 50 per cent turnout threshold", showed "what can be achieved when we are united and members lead the campaign and negotiating agenda”.

Vicky Blake, UCU branch president at the University of Leeds, who is also standing for vice-president, said that it would be a mistake to “use the language of blame for the failure” to hit the threshold.

“We need a culture shift where people go and vote,” said Ms Blake, who said that the union should “take time to ask members in a structured way why they are not voting.”

She nonetheless defended the decision to rerun the pay ballot after the “awful timing” of the first ballot, which saw ballot sheets “arrive when people were away from their desks”?after the end of summer term in 2018.

“I thought we would do a better job in a second ballot but voting fatigue might have counted as a factor,” she added.

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Some commentators on Twitter have blamed the failure of UCU’s national leadership to swing behind the second strike ballot, claiming that it was wary of starting industrial action just a year after the pensions strikes of early 2018.

However, Matt Waddup, UCU’s head of policy, rejected that accusation, stating that the “union sent out more than a million individual communications to members and the outstanding work of branches probably doubled that”.

“Our activists and organising staff worked their backsides off knocking on tens of thousands of doors and phone banking,” he said,?adding that the local “Get The Vote Out” strategy of most branches was “significantly improved compared with the first ballot and even with USS last year”.

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“If we are serious about replicating our USS success elsewhere, we need to discuss and agree an underlying, long-term strategy that starts with the membership,” Mr Waddup added, stating that union members must “talk to each other rather than lock horns about what went wrong. We also need to talk to, rather than insult, those who did not vote.”

Michael Carley, UCU branch president at the University of Bath, also dismissed the idea that UCU’s central office was to blame for the poor turnout.

“Branches which succeeded in getting a high turnout did it thanks to a lot of local legwork, knocking on doors and local department-level networks,” said Dr Carley. He added: “I don’t see what national or even regional organisers have to do with that.”

Dr Carley, a member of UCU’s higher education committee, added that the resignation of?Ms Hunt also meant that the union was likely to have a “genuinely healthy debate” about tactics and its general direction.

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“This is the first election in UCU’s history when there is no incumbent – that opens the debate in ways that we have probably never seen before.”

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com

POSTSCRIPT:

Print headline: Union’s vote failure ‘must not become blame game’

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Reader's comments (5)

One of the current UCU exec member once commented to me, the "UCU in some Universities is little more than a schoolboy debating society", that perhaps is part of the problem? The strong Trotskyist leanings in some branches are counterpoised by members refusing to go down that hard path that leads to conflict with managements buoyed up by governments hatred of Trades Unions. A more even less hard 'middle path' approach however won't work with so many intransigent 'professional' manager led Universities directed by commercially minded governing council members. Then there's the overwhelming focus on 'equality' some branches are espousing, especially equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity and meritocracy, leading to further disconnection from members who are becoming so disillusioned with a union that doesn't represent them, their needs and protecting Academic rigour that they refuse to support the Union pitching them into disputes that will cost them money with little if any benefit.
UCU is no longer a union that represents members' views or interests, despite their claims to the contrary. Repeated ballots for strike action resulting in a minority turnout show that there is no appetite for industrial action. It is widely reported that Universities are dominated by left-leaning academics. These ballot results are not, then, a sign of academics agreeing with the agendas of government or politically loyal senior managers, but indicate an understanding amongst members that to be successful industrial action needs to be targeted and timely. Two ballots during the Augur review following numerous parliamentary reports in the last could of years is reckless and damaging to the sector. Demoralised and overworked academics who are already feeling the pressure of immense change do not need the further demoralisation of ballots let alone industrial action. The members know that. Moreover, academics do not need the very public news that there is no appetite for industrial action that results from the ballots. The outcome of this ballot will only serve to embolden those who are determined to change the HE sector beyond all recognition. My simple message to UCU: stop being disappointed in your membership, learn to listen to them, represent them, and pick fights that you can win. Branch Committees work hard, but in my experience they are guilty of group think, believe their own rhetoric, and are amongst the least well informed of my colleagues. They listen selectively, misunderstand half of what is said to them, and only understand the external context through blinkered ideology and theory. Some demonstrate an unbelievable level of naivety and ignorance of the external context. Some branch committee members are also amongst the most intolerant and judgemental of any of my colleagues, measuring success and personal characteristics/motivations of staff and students only on their own terms with no empathy for alternative perspectives.
1 simple change would fix this: Online voting. People don't bother to send the physical ballot back because it is a pain in the ass.
Agreed
Since national UCU and AUT before it were and are dominated by the right-wing it is absurd to try and pin the blame for failure on "left-leaning academics".

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